Background and Objectives: Discharge of textile colored wastewater industries without providing enough treatment in water bodies, is harmful for human and aquatic organisms and poses serious damages to the environment. Most of conventional wastewater treatment methods don't have enough efficiency to remove textile dyes from colored wastewater; thus in this research the efficiency of electrocoagulation treatment process with aluminum electrodes for treatment of a synthetic wastewater containing C.I. Reactive Red 198 in batch reactor was studied.
Material and Methods: The experiment conducted in a Plexiglas reactor with a working volume of 2L that equipped with 4 aluminum electrodes. The effects of operating parameters such as voltage, time of reaction, initial dye concentration and interelectrode distance on the color removal efficiency, electrical energy consumption and electrode consumption were investigated.
Results: in the optimum operational condition electrocoagulation, is able to remove color and COD as high as 99.1 and 84.3% in aluminum electrode in 75 minutes at 20 volt and 2 cm interelectrode distance, respectively. Under this condition, operating cost was 2986 rails per cubic meter of treated wastewater. Increase in the interelectrode distance and initial dye concentration,lead to the decrease in efficiency of dye and COD removal.While as the voltage and time of reaction increased, energy consumption, electrode consumption, final pH and color removal, increased too.
Conclusion: electrocoagulation process by aluminum electrode is an efficient and suitable method for reactive dye removal from colored wastewater.